The Human Being Diet… have you done it?

[Heybarbie1028]

I’ve just discovered the HBD diet. I’ve posted recently about how I am extremely overweight (17 stone, 5”6) and extremely unhealthy.

The HBD seems like it could be a good option for me, to completely reset my nutrition and diet and learn how to eat well again.

Has anyone done it? What were your experiences?

Ok, here it is in a nutshell:

wake up, drink half a pint of water
eat breakfast within one hour (1 boiled egg, 100gms salad & avocado, black coffee)

only water for the next 5 hours

lunch: 120gms steamed salmon & 120gms veggies
1 apple
black tea or coffee

only water for the next 5 hours

supper: 120gms grilled chicken, 120gms steamed veggies

finish eating before 9pm.

No oil, dairy, sugar, alcohol, wheat.

Good luck!

I have the book. I could do it in conjunction with you if you really want to give it a go. When do you want to start? Today? Tomorrow? What have you got in the fridge and cupboard? If you have eggs, tinned fish (in water), bagged salad and a bit of fruit then you’ll be OK.

Lets do it for ONE DAY and see how you get on .

oh, and drink 3 litres of water every day so make sure you’re in easy access of a loo.

Anyone who even suggests that tea is bad thing gets a HARD stare from me....come on OP this ain't realistic.

Slimpod, which someone mentioned, talks about how poisonous this denial diet mentality is. Life is for living, just in moderation.

@Junobug please can you summarisation book you recommended- the main principles?

Do you mean Why we eat too much?
If so, it talks lots about the diet industry and why diets (like this one) don't work. Lots about upf and what they actually do to your body. Lots about cultural, economical and historical reasons that people are overweight, which is fascinating. And then what to do about it. He is very strict on no upf including veg oil and white flour (although does say pasta/rice salad is ok), low sugar (although I don't think the science actually suggests this to the extent he says). Basically, eat what humans are designed to eat. There are threads on the diet board about it.
I would also recommend ultra processed people as once you know what's in upf, it makes it harder to eat.

I’m doing it currently and some of the posts on this thread are seriously ill informed. Fair enough if the diet isn’t for you but it’s not as restrictive as people are suggesting.

i started on 22 November and have lost 20lbs since then relatively easily and still enjoying my food. If you are a reasonable cook, it’s fine. It doesn’t work if you rely a lot on pre-prepared or processed foods.

As others have said there are 4 phases

Phase 1 which is only 2 days is effectively a 2 day fast. You can eat unlimited vegetables but no oil, dairy or gluten.

Phase 2 lasts 14 days and is also strict. It’s effectively a low carb, low fat phase. You eat meat, dairy, veg in controlled portions but no added fats. The amount you can eat depends on how much you weigh - 120g of each is the absolute minimum and only for those who are petite and not very heavy!

Phase 3 (which is where I am) is absolutely fine. In Phase 3, you add in olive oil, bread, alcohol and chocolate and also have one mandatory treat meal per week where literally anything goes which makes it easy to maintain a social
life or fit around work commitments.

A typical days food for me at the moment for example might be:

breakfast - 2 scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms and a slice of rye toast

Lunch - smoked mackerel fillet with a mixed salad, vinaigrette dressing and an apple

Dinner - duck breast with celeriac purée and green beans. Glass of wine. Few squares of dark chocolate.

I don’t eat between meals any longer and have given up on soft drinks including diet drinks and I tend to have my tea or coffee after a meal as recommended rather than between meals but I’m not completely hard and fast on that.

Once a week, I either eat out, have a takeaway, or eat with friends and I choose freely what I would like with no restrictions as to amount or what I’m eating. So last night it was a friends birthday and we had champagne, wine, a restaurant meal in a Lebanese restaurant, cake and coffee.

I am 55 and was finding it hard to kickstart weight loss but the structure of this diet has worked for me. It won’t for everyone but I don’t agree with the comments that it is unduly restrictive (other than for the first 16 days - phases 1 and 2 - which I see as more of a mental reset and reframing than a physical one). The hard fact is that for those of us who have weight to lose, the reason for that is because we have been eating too large a volume of food and/or not the correct balance of foods. To lose weight it’s inevitable that we will need to both eat less and eat differently. The HBD is just one way of doing that!

Another stupid fad diet. It sounds awful,and you won't stick to it. You know it.

It sounds like a fad diet based on disordered eating, honestly

There is a very active Instagram community for HBD @Heybarbie1028 where people post their recipes and pictures of what they are eating. Have a browse of that for some proper information

@MustardGreenAndPlum with kindness your posted menu sounds completely grim and unimaginative! The parameters of the diet would have let you eat much more healthily and appealingly than the bland flavourless fare you have conjured up. I’m not surprised you gave up if that’s what you were eating in a daily basis but those were your choices not what the eating plan restricted you to in reality.

I disagree.

Total fad. It really is eat less and move more even though a lot of people don’t want to hear that and want a magic fix.

You disagree that even in Phase 2 you could have eaten a much more appetising and varied diet 😂😂😂

You couldn’t for example have had smoked salmon, avocado and cherry tomatoes for breakfast, a homemade chicken curry with cauliflower rice for lunch and a steak with roasted butternut squash and broccoli for dinner? You HAD to have unseasoned fish or poultry with steamed vegetables.

OK.

If this is working for you, then great. But there are a few issues with diets like this
Firstly, if you purposefully starve your body, it will retaliate and learn to burn less calories. Calorie restrictive diets do not work. Your body is far cleverer than calories in vs calories out.
There is no need to restrict healthy fats, coffee, fruit, or decent carbs. For the reasons above and because it makes it far more likely to fail, feel like a failure and give up.
And by having a mandatory treat, aren't you making food good and bad? We've learnt not to do this with children, why do it to ourselves.
If a diet actually works, brilliant, but these things are designed to make money, not get you to loose weight and be healty long term. Thats why there have been so many fad diets over the past 100 years.

I don’t disagree with your principles @Junobug just whether they actually apply to this diet!

1. healthy fats aren’t restricted. After Day 16, the expectation is that you will use olive oil in your cooking on a daily basis - in all 3 meals if desired. Even in the first 16 days naturally occurring fats such as avocados and meat and dairy are actively encouraged. Contrary to what @MustardGreenAndPlum said, yogurt should be full fat not low fat.
2. Coffee and fruit are not restricted. You are encouraged however not to snack between meals but to consume them with meals. This is consistent with theories of intermittent fasting just applied slightly differently.
3. The treat meal theory is twofold - first it tries to address your concern about body holding on to calories if it’s restricted over a long period. Second, it makes the diet easier to fit around normal social life styles
4. As can be seen from one meal plan posted, it’s possible to have disordered eating on any diet as it’s your choice of meals which determines that. It’s also possible to make poor diet choices when not following any weight reduction plan. My point is that there is nothing intrinsic to the HBD guidelines which forces you to eat in a disordered way over a prolonged period and a short 2 day vegetable fast as a one off is harmless.
5. The fact is that to lose weight, you do need to change your existing eating patterns as that is what caused you to gain the weight in the first place. And once you lose the excess weight, you need a different way of eating again. If you revert to old patterns you will regain the weight and if you stick to the diet mentality you risk disordered eating.

I may be coming across as an evangelist for this particular diet. I’m really not. Lots of different diets work for different people. But there is also a tendency on weight loss threads to be unnecessarily hypercritical of diet plans others are following and to portray them in ways which just aren’t correct and that’s what I’ve seen on this thread. Sure it is possible to eat badly and unhealthily on the HBD if you put no thought at all into what you are doing. But it’s also easy to eat very healthy and delicious food and eliminating all the ultra processed junk is a really good thing to do and is what this way of eating encourages

Thank you all for the replies / advice / experience sharing.

I bought the book last night and read the introduction in bed at 11pm.

I want to give it a go but I am worried I’ll find it too hard.

I am currently 17 stone and eat what I want, when I want.

I’d definitely encourage you to join the insta community @Heybarbie1028. It’s massively supportive. Set yourself up with an insta profile with hbd in your name (even if you have another account it’s good to keep them separate) and then search for and follow others with hbd in their names.

Also happy for you to DM me on here if you have any questions or want some meal inspo. Or maybe set up a separate thread for recipe ideas for each phase as you do it?

I'm on the 5:2 diet. It is medically proven to work and I have started to lose weight. A few headaches, at first, but they've now gone and I feel happier. I try to stick to the same fasting days but do vary them if I'm going out so I can have dessert and a glass of wine 😀

I read Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer's the Fast Diet and decided I could keep to it because on non fast days I can eat what I like providing I don't binge! In fact, I don't eat as much as I was so my weight and waist are, slowly but surely, decreasing 😀

@Heybarbie1028

You say you eat what you want , when you want . There lies the problem .I

What you want I'm guessing it's not healthy food , I'm also guessing not healthy portions When you want ? Not just 3/4 times a day , but also snacking , potentially binging in the evenings ?

I say this because this is me also .

Basically any diet will work ( even faddy , silly ones ) because it is a restriction of food and less calories , however , stop them and go back to your old way of eating and the weight goes back on . Rinse and repeat .

I am the queen of yo- yo dieting and it's big numbers , I m talking of as an adult weighing between 7 stone 8 , and 15 stone 10 , and I've spent my life doing it , my weight has been an issue all my life and I can't just get to where I'm happy and stay around that and maintain.

No. It’s just another person making money off the misery of others. Eat less and move more.

Eat better and move more.

You don't need to go hungry if you're eating the right food.

Agree with you 100%

I think you'd be better off looking at the low glycemic index diet. You don't have to cut out all carbs, you do have to stop eating sugar, white bread, flour, pasta and potatoes and switch to alternatives. You can only eat small portions of any one type of carb, and its best to mix them.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/spotlight-low-gi

I use it, it's the one thing that does get my weight down steadily and effectively, as I'm disabled and moving more just isn't an option. The two week induction period is brutal at first, although you do stop the cravings after a few days, and it does help with inflammation which was the other main reason. It does help too to re set me on portion size. Once your weight's where you want it a more relaxed version of the diet does help me maintain it.

I've slid entirely off it since Christmas and immediately started to gain again eating the way I used to. Need to get back to it and re do the induction!

OP (and others) ‘toxins’ in the context of food or dieting is totally made up rubbish. It’s an idea which was made up recently to sell diet books, apps, shakes, juices etc.

Eating healthily is incredibly easy. It is something every human society worked out hundreds of years ago. You almost certainly learned it at school. Anybody who sells you a special programme and mentions toxins is talking bollocks.

Eat a balanced diet (you know what that is) and don’t be sedentary. If you want to lose weight then eat less of the balanced diet for a while. That’s it. If that is difficult for you then the reasons are medical, social or psychological you will not find the answer in a ‘diet’

@Elvanseshortage i don’t think I do know what a balanced diet is. That’s why I’ve hit 17 stone.